Matt Johnson of Brooklyn dance-punk duo Matt and Kim has been giving whirlwind interviews all afternoon, ten minutes at a time, but he still has energy to chat with SuicideGirls about his band's new album, Sidewalks. The first single, "Cameras," is so catchy that it's led Matt to tell the press, "We don't write songs anymore. We write anthems."

We've heard the new record, and Matt is absolutely right. He and his bandmate/significant other, Kim Schifino, have put together one hell of a danceable album. You'll have to buy the album, though, because Matt tells us that he and Kim won't be playing any of the new songs live, except for "Cameras." Unlike many bands touring a new album, Matt and Kim will only throw down the songs the people came to hear.

Matt is nearly as much in interviews as he is at a show -- which is to say, really, really fun -- and he told us some great stories about the new album, his life with Kim, and some surprising things he's never tried.

Jay Hathaway: How's all this whirlwind interviewing going?

Matt Johnson: It's good, it's good. I can take care of it. (coughs) Well, other than this impending bronchitis that I haven't gotten rid of for like a month. I've been doing plenty of sleeping, so that just keeps my energy in check.

JH: I read about your bronchitis a while back. I'm amazed it's not gone by now!

MJ: I would've thought, too, but I think drinking 'til 4am every single day for months on end doesn't help you get rid of it too quickly!

JH: So true. What are your ideas for videos for the new album?

MJ: We have one in the pipeline. We were planning on shooting before we left on tour, which was in early September. We ended up not being able to, so we're going to shoot when we finish this tour in mid-November. I can't disclose a lot of information on it. I think it will probably make some people mad, but I think it will make more people happy.

JH: Do you think it'll be as controversial as the "Lessons Learned" video (where Matt and Kim got naked)?

MJ: No, probably not. It's a little bit of a different angle, but we'll see. We'll see what comes out.

JH: I've heard you're only playing one of the new songs live. Is that true?

MJ: I just know that when I go to a show, and the band says, "Who wants to hear a new song?" everyone kinda just says, "No, we want to hear the stuff we know and can sing along to!" So we decided this was going to be the last tour of our last album, Grand, as well as a bunch of older stuff, and we do a lot of cover interludes for 10 or 20 seconds between songs. It still feels fresh and new, but we decided not to play any of Sidewalks yet, for the most part.

JH: In an interview a while back, you said you'd never seen Star Wars and never put milk on your cereal. Have you done either of those things yet?

MJ: I have not! Last night, I said to Kim, "I know I can get no one to cheer in this crowd if I say 'Like me, who out here hasn't seen Star Wars?'" And, of course, no one yells, because everyone's fucking seen Star Wars except for me. It was just one of those things. I realized at one point I hadn't seen it yet, and I thought, "Huh. That'd be funny if I never see it."

And then with cereal and milk, I -- dry cereal has basically been one of my favorite foods since I was a kid, and at one point I realized I had never tried cereal and milk together, combined before. I was like, "Huh. I wonder if I can just make it forever." Even this morning, I had a cup of dry Honey Nut Cheerios. It's delicious. I eat it out of a coffee mug, like my morning coffee.

JH: Do you have any other firsts you'd like to achieve, either musically or personally?

MJ: I'm sure there's a lot. I haven't thought about it so much. I have a weird intrigue to teen drama shows, in the sense that where I grew up in Vermont, I went to public school, but even public school was a graduating grade of 17. There were like 50 people in my high school, so there was no such thing as popularity. I'm intrigued as an idea by popularity at school. And then when I went to college, I went to art school at Pratt in Brooklyn, and I never really got it then. That's not something I will ever experience, so I wonder what regular school -- like, we never had a football team at any of those schools, so it's a weird part of American culture that I think everyone experiences, except for me. I'm just there watching Gossip Girl, like, "What is this all about?"

Musically, with the band, we've been wanting to collaborate with -- well, Kim and I are big hip hop fans, and we want to collaborate with some MCs and a couple of producers. Everyone's so busy, including ourselves, that we just haven't been able to make it work yet. In the indie rock world, there's never really any collaborating outside of the band. It gives you a chance to make something that you wouldn't make by yourself.

JH: Was this the first album you've gone into a studio to record, instead of doing it yourself? Did you learn anything new

MJ: We recorded our first album in the studio, but we didn't have any money or anything. We recorded it in all of nine days. When we went into Grand, we did it ourselves because we wanted to try whatever the fuck Matt and Kim wanted to try. If Matt and Kim wanted to try a mean harmonica solo on a song that was going to suck, at least we wanted to try it, you know?

Then going into this album, Sidewalks, we had enough money to work in studios with people who knew what the hell they were doing in the recording department, and still take as much time as we wanted to do whatever dumb things we wanted to try. It was a similar length to our last album, Grand. We spent about 9 months on each of them. But with this one, we were able to spend more time on the songs, and less time on recording shit.

JH: When you and Kim spend so much time together on the road and in the studio, how much does your working relationship affect your romantic relationship, and vice versa?

MJ: We've realized that there's pretty much no separation between the two, even though we call our working relationship Matt and Kim, and our personal relationship we call Kim and Matt. There's not really much differentiation. But the craziest part about it is after all the time we spend together -- which is every hour, every day -- Kim and I shared a cell phone for five years, and we never had to call each other. That shows how much time we spend together. -- the crazy part is that we haven't killed each other yet. We don't seem to have the desire to. We continue to get along. I can't figure it out. Even after we've been in a bus for two months together, and in each other's space, we get home and it's like, "You want to go out and get some dinner?" We only leave each other if someone has to use the bathroom, basically.

JH: What kinds of jobs did you guys have before you were in a band? Do you have any good shitty job stories?

MJ: My first job was at a wine-bottling place, when I was like 14. My whole job was taking bottles out of a cardboard box, and putting them on a counter, and someone would take them away from there. A machine could have done my job. That was terrible.

Another one I had was, have you ever driven down the road and there's the guy turning the stop and slow sign? And you're like, "Man, that job must suck!" Let me tell you something: that job does suck. I definitely did that my senior year of high school. So, I've had my share.